


The One Where It’s My Truth

by SadFic4SadBitch



Series: Namjackjin [3]
Category: GOT7, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Flirting Lessons, Love, M/M, Pining, gotbangtan, namjackjin, very mild cursing, way more poetic than it needs to be lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28754211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadFic4SadBitch/pseuds/SadFic4SadBitch
Summary: Jackson offers to give Namjoon flirting lessons so he can maybe confess his love to Jin, but of course, Jackson Wang is absolutely enamored by Namjoon. Part III of what I've titled the "Namjackjin" series, which is a spoiler in itself.
Relationships: Kim Namjoon | RM/Jackson Wang, Kim Namjoon | RM/Kim Seokjin | Jin
Series: Namjackjin [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2092035
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	The One Where It’s My Truth

PART I

He liked getting what he wanted. 

Was this why he was back here, pacing in front of Namjoon’s door? A tiger in a cage. He knocked again. 

“Hello?” Namjoon said as he opened the door, sticking his painstakingly messy head into the opening. Ah yes, Jackson remembered, that was the reason he was here. Kim Namjoon. Namjoon-ah. It would be easiest and best for everyone involved if he just said what he came to say and left. But Jackson wasn’t fond of doing things the easiest way, as his bandmates never hesitated to remind him. So, rather than say his piece, he crossed his arms and tilted his chin, mocking tough. “Uh, oh, hey,” Namjoon began, his face unable to return to normal from his initial shock. 

Jackson laughed and broke his pose. He playfully hit RM on the side of the head. “’Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Namjoon mutely stood aside, thinking god knew what. Jackson bounced into Namjoon’s apartment as if he hadn’t left. Maybe he hadn’t. It had been nearly two weeks since he’d woken up and seen the way Namjoon looked at Jin. “So, I have an excellent proposal,” he started, toeing off his shoes. Jackson wasn’t sure what he was starting to say, but he had found out some time ago that sometimes it was better just to let his mouth do all the work. 

Namjoon continued to stare, and Jackson plowed ahead before he remembered he was only human. “Okay, first, I know you’re in love with Jin.” 

“I – I…” 

“Speechless is fine. I have that effect on people,” Jackson said and winked. He knew that Namjoon hated it when he was cocky. And fake. But maybe it would be better if he acted like this. “I’ll help you. Be your confidant. Tips,” he said. 

Namjoon shook his head, confused at first and then angry. He crossed his arms, but he wasn’t being fake playful. “And what gave you the impression that I was in love with Jin?” Because you aren’t in love with me, Jackson thought. “You don’t even know him. Come on, you don’t know me!” Namjoon turned around and began to walk towards his kitchen. 

Jackson caught up to Namjoon quickly, a hand stretching out and catching the other man’s hip, spinning him around to meet him in the middle of the floor. And Jackson wondered if Namjoon felt his hand on him like his hand was on him nearly two weeks ago now, a hand hot and heavy and he wondered if the memories would hold him down and sink him to the bottom of the sea. “I want to know you. I want to help you,” he said. “I’m your friend!” he exclaimed, too loud for the moment, but he had to diffuse the bomb. He let go the other man and stepped back. 

“Why am I saying yes?” Namjoon said after a moment. He rolled his eyes at the ceiling and gave a half-grin, one that was more half-sad than half-happy. 

Jackson already knew what neither of them voiced. That Jin and Namjoon already had a secret language of their own. There was nothing he could do to help. There was so much he didn’t know. But he was an infinite optimist, and even though RM played at being a realist or artfully cynical, Jackson liked to think that he too was willing to have faith in simple things. 

Jackson wished, not for the first time, that he could tell what was going on in the other man’s mind. “What are you thinking?”

“Why do you always ask that?” 

“Why do you always not answer?” Jackson made a goofy face at the other man. “Just admit it, you’re thinking of me without my clothes. It’s cool man. I mean it’s not like there’s any surprises for you.” 

“Oh! Okay, are we playing it like that?” Namjoon said, shocked but not overly. “This is a public restaurant. I have an image.” 

Jackson snorted. “Yeah right. Oh, oh, try this. Ready?” 

“Yeah.”

“No, no, are you ready?”

“You’re a shitty teacher,” Namjoon snorted. 

Watch

Jackson leaned forward and laughed low. 

And 

“You’re a mess, Namjoon.” He reached out a hand and brushed a loose hair from the other man’s forehead before sitting back. 

Learn. 

Namjoon nodded intently, but Jackson noticed with satisfaction the blush that was spreading across his face. “Like this,” he said, and mimicked the motion, his fingertips brushing Jackson’s forehead. Jackson resisted the urge to plant a kiss on Namjoon’s palm, and for once, his mouth listened. 

“Wow, Kim, you’re starting to be a little less like this –” he made a frantic fluttering motion with his arms. “And a little more like this,” he said nodding his head with his fingers on his chin in an interesting imitation of Taehyung. 

“Hey! Are you saying Tae is sexy?” 

“Easily the sexiest member of BTS.” 

Fine, Namjoon’s eyes said. “When are you going to introduce me to JB?” 

They were on set for a music video when Namjoon walked in through the side door, searching over the tops of passing heads. “Jackson, your boy is here,” Bambam noted, wiggling his eyebrows. 

“He’s not my boy,” Jackson said automatically, reserved and curious. He jogged over to where the other man was standing. They watched as their friend and brother-in-arms bent his head together with RM, squeezing the other man’s arm and grinning. 

“Look at them!” Yugyeom giggled, and Jinyoung hit him on the arm absently. Jackson walked back towards them, pretty obviously imagining that Namjoon was still standing at the doorway watching him walk away. But the other man had already left. 

Mark moved forward and intercepted Jackson, flanked by Jinyoung. They each grabbed an arm and dragged an only vaguely protesting Jackson into a back hallway. “Tell me how the maknae can see what you can’t,” Jinyoung started without preamble. He could be quite blunt. 

Mark shot his friend side-eye before approaching the matter with a more sympathetic tone. “Jackson, this is too much for you.” 

“I’m not doing anything!” He stopped and leaned against the wall, hearing the whining tone in his own voice. “He’s my friend.” His friends just stared at him, unamused. “He’s got his first date… well, I mean he’s hanging out with Jin tonight. He’s nervous.” Jackson shrugged. 

“You’re in love with him,” Jinyoung stated abruptly, and Mark sighed. 

Jackson closed his eyes for the briefest moment – most people wouldn’t have even noticed (Mark and Jinyoung weren’t most people) – before opening them. He rolled his eyes. “Love? This isn’t a movie. I like him, sure. Sure. But if you think –”

“We don’t think that you set this whole thing up as some scheme –” Mark began.

“What if I did? What if I meant it to be like this from the beginning?” Jackson asked, and he was smiling but his chest hurt, and he couldn’t understand why. 

“I highly doubt that,” Mark answered. 

“Sometimes I say things without actually thinking…”

“Noooooooo,” Jinyoung drawled, but he was smiling. 

“Okay…” Mark started, but Jackson laughed and pulled them in for a sideways hug, artfully dodging whatever advice his friends had been hoping to impart.

PART II

Jin wrapped Namjoon in a hug as soon as the door opened. He had thought the other man would never call him, which is ridiculous, of course (but how could he not think it)? But really, why wouldn’t Namjoon want to be his best friend? They were best friends, he repeated to himself, and tried not to get lost in the familiar smell of soft cologne and the food he’d cooked – he’d cooked? – for dinner. Whatever was new about his friend, nothing could change that they were Namjoon’s arms around him. 

“Come on,” Namjoon said and moved aside so that he could come through the door. 

After that, Jin couldn’t help but admit it was strange at first. They didn’t talk much, or look at each other, but then one of them told an old story, or mentioned something one of the other Bangtan boys had said, and then they forgot the passing of time. They forgot (or pretended to) the fact that they hadn’t talked in such a long time. And that some of that time wasn’t the consequence of life getting in the way of the way they loved to look into one another’s eyes and make the other one laugh, but their own stubbornness. 

No, Jin thought, watching Namjoon out of the corner of his eyes. Not stubbornness. What was it? Jin turned to face his friend, and froze as he noticed Namjoon leaning toward him. He though his stomach was probably a puddle at his feet, and he was acutely aware that he’d never tried to love anyone before. He remembered sleepless nights, shallowly wondering why it was so unfair. Why he wasn’t allowed to love anyone. 

Namjoon reached over and pushed a stray hair off of Jin’s forehead. RM’s fingers had barely left his forehead when Jin bust up laughing. It should have been sexy or romantic, in front of the fireplace. Maybe to anyone else it could have been. But Jin panicked, and he couldn’t look past how ridiculous the move was coming from RM, his sometimes cocky but mostly flustered and emo Namjoon. 

Namjoon for his part evidently didn’t agree with Jin’s humorous appraisal of the situation. He turned away, face set before standing up and shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “Hey, are you okay?” Jin asked, putting his foot in it, probably. 

“Okay? Am I okay? No, for fuck’s sake, I’m not okay!” 

Jin wasn’t taken aback. He knew, of course. He knew what they both knew and had felt so deeply it hurt him to breathe sometimes. Like when he sat miles and miles away from him and sat with his fingers over his keyboard or his pen hovering above the paper and wondered what to write, how to say the things they never had to say. Namjoon was his words. Namjoon always knew how to write what he was feeling better than he could ever say out loud.

He wasn’t surprised, he realized. He was angry. Because Jin had just as much a right as anyone to be pissed about this. It was his anger too. This thing between them was never one way. 

But Jin pushed it back, because he couldn’t seem to stop wanting to fix it, make it better. Kiss it, put a Band-aid on it. Make it like it never happened because wasn’t it easier this way? “Hey, I understand. But please, sit down,” he said. 

“Sit down? Sit down and what, exactly? We’ll talk about old times? You’ll tell me about what it was like when you were gone? What could you possibly understand about how I’m feeling?” 

“Namjoon.” 

“You never wrote me! And now, now I think I imagined goddamn everything between us, didn’t I?” Namjoon shouted. 

This time Jin did reel back like the other man had hit him. He looked up at Namjoon, and the only thing betraying his anger was his eyes that blazed in the light from the fire. “Oh, you forgot already. I saw you. You slept with someone else,” he said intensely, not shouting and raging because he didn’t have to. 

“You can’t shame me! I waited. I waited and waited, and then I thought it was all a dream,” Namjoon said, and he sat back down next to Jin. “I thought I was crazy, and you never wrote.” And it was Jin who felt guilty, felt guilt so toxic it curdled his stomach. “Please, do not shame me. Because- because I am not ashamed, Jin.” 

“I didn’t know what to say,” Jin said. “In the letters?” 

“Don’t cry, I cry when you cry.” 

“I didn’t know what to say. We never said it, Namjoon. We never said I love you.” 

“I know,” he said, and he looked away into the fire. Jin watched his profile in the soft light and saw him swallow once, twice. “He was there for me,” he said to the floor, and his voice broke just the tiniest bit. “Wouldn’t even leave when I tried to kick him out,” he added with a small smile. Jin reached out towards him and pulled him close, Namjoon nestling into his neck, their legs tangled. Namjoon’s arms circled round his waist and they were Namjoon’s arms, same as before, but he knew they couldn’t pretend anymore. It wouldn’t do.

They sat that way for some time before Jin asked, “Do you love him?” 

Namjoon picked his head up a bit, and his voice was drowsy when he responded, “What?”

“Who.”

“Who?” Namjoon echoed.

“Jackson.” 

Namjoon sat up and rubbed a crick in his neck, scooting forward to the edge of the couch. Jin rubbed a hand up the back of his spine, leaned forward and feeling bold, kissed the back of Namjoon’s neck. As if they weren’t discussing another man. As if there wasn’t a problem in the world with discussing another man as they sat by the firelight and held one another. 

“Honestly?” Namjoon asked, and turned his head to read Jin’s face. Jin nodded. He wanted to know, and he wasn’t sure if the news would wound him, or set him free. “Honestly, I don’t know. He confuses the hell out of me.”

“Like me?” 

Namjoon turned fully around and only hesitated a second before placing his hands on either side of Jin’s face. “You’re the only thing that makes sense in the world. Even like this,” he added. Like this meaning confused and content and angry and regretful of time lost – but not, Jin remembered, shameful. Jin also had no time for shame and so he leaned forward and captured Namjoon’s mouth with his own. 

But it was a kiss of the sort that neither expected. It was sincere and it was bittersweet, but it was finite. They hugged and Namjoon curled up half on the other man’s lap and was soon asleep. Jin, on the other hand, did not sleep for a long time. He stared into the fire, and he looked at Namjoon’s face, and he wondered. He wondered about his own future. He’d never had his own life before, after all. 

It would be nice to live for himself. 

Part III

When Namjoon answered his door, he didn’t know what he was thinking or feeling. He didn’t know if he was happy about what they’d wordlessly decided last night. He rubbed the side of his face where the crease marks from sleeping on the couch wouldn’t go away. The light of day was a judge and jury. He’d asked Jin whether he had imagined everything between them before Jin had gone away, but at the same time, didn’t everything him and Jackson hang on a rainstorm in the pitch black? Maybe love belonged to the night. Had he really given up so much for- 

“Jackson?” he said, surprised, staring at the man standing on his doorstep. “You look like shit.” 

Jackson’s worried face evaporated and he grinned. “Fuck you!” 

“Well, good morning to you, too.” Namjoon said, and he bit his lip. “Is everything okay?” he asked, though it wasn’t that unusual for the other man to pick him up first thing in the morning for who knows what. It was unusual for him to be anything but immaculately dressed. His outfit was slept in, hair shoved beneath a hat, and his arms were crossed like the nice summer breeze stung. 

His face grew serious again. “I guess it’s early… but… um, wow, you ruined my serious speech.” 

“You, serious?” 

“Namjoon, I can’t be your friend.” 

“What? Is it because I haven’t showered today?”

Jackson’s exterior melted, and for once, Namjoon didn’t have to wonder what he was like on the inside. He’d thought that Jackson didn’t wear a mask like other people. He’d assumed a lot about him. “See, I’m a joke to you, and that’s okay. I like making you laugh, but I couldn’t sleep last night… And, well, I pretended I was okay with everything, but I guess I had to know deep… you can’t look at me like…” Jackson gave a half-smile, seeming to relax as he stuck his hands in his pockets. “Hey, I’ll just see you around, you know?” he said before turning and walking away from a stunned Namjoon. 

Namjoon jogged down the sidewalk, half-remembering Yoongi’s advice from weeks before. He had been right, of course. Life couldn’t make sense. Love would never make any sense. “Hey!” he yelled, and it was summer and it was sunny and he scolded his earlier thought that boys like Jackson only belonged to the night. “How do I look at him? How does…” 

Jackson stopped, and Namjoon walked around him on the sidewalk. Jackson looked up at him, chin defiant, mouth resigned, and eyes steady. But it wasn’t the way Jin looked at him, or even the way he looked at Jin. It was the way Jackson looked at Namjoon. 

Namjoon closed the distance between them. Jackson tilted his head up and met his lips halfway. RM slide his hands up his sweatshirt so that he could feel the other man’s skin beneath his fingertips. “I don’t understand,” Jackson said eventually. 

“Did you really think I needed lessons in flirting?”

“Yes, obviously. But what does that have to do with anything?” 

“And you said I make a joke out of you!” Namjoon said, but he was laughing. “Okay, the point is, I’ve loved Jin for a long time, and I still love him.” 

“Oh,” Jackson sighed, and nodded, starting to step back. 

“No, no,” he whispered, moving his thumbs in circles on Jackson’s bare skin. “Because, for a long time I loved him, but I didn’t really like myself anymore. And then, and then you broke into my house and my phone and my head, and I can see.” 

“See what?” 

“You.” Jackson grinned. “What, speechless for once?” Namjoon teased.

“Shut up,” he said, and sniffled and wipes a sleeve across his face, though he couldn’t stop smiling. Namjoon laughed and pulled him into a hug. The summer wind continued to gently blow the trees around them.

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, yes, Namjackjin. There's no shipping wars in this house though (stay tuned).


End file.
